Speech.

College Speech class, or as it's called where I go, COM 115, is a ridiculously hard class.  Maybe it's just my teacher, who is amazing, but expects a lot of her students.  Anyways...yesterday I spent four hours on my informative speech assignment, finishing up research, filling out an outline, writing a "Works Cited" page, and preparing a power point presentation to go with my speech, which requires a visual aid.  Four hours.  Then, then today I spent another 30 minutes or so, just writing up my speaking notes.  And after my fabulous fish fingers and custard dinner, I have to go and practice the speech, in front of a mirror, in front of my brother, on recording...for probably two hours.  Oh...

It's a fun class, though.  She makes the lectures fun.  It's just a lot of work!  But I'm good at it.  Forensics has helped me a ton with all of it, though, especially doing extemp, cuz extemp taught me attention getters, final thoughts, speech structure, thinking on my feet, confidence, eye contact...pretty much everything you need for a speech.  Not that I"m perfect.  Not in the least.  I tend to stress out over time (something I learned from extemp, but the oppostite).  With extemp, I'm always afraid I'll go under time, so I try to make sure I get over, but with this speech class, I'm trying to stay under time about 90% of the time...which makes me talk faster sometimes, and makes my audience connection a little weak.  Also, my general personality shies away from being animated, and exciting in my speech-giving.  So I have to be someone not myself to actually interest my audience, and give a good speech...

My biggest wonderment though is how much of this class I can transfer to extemp.  Am I allowed to be animated and fun in extemp speeches?